Correspondence: Kenny Chan, c/o Suite 1115, No.45 Hong Yue St. Quarry Bay, H.K. Tel: 78912991; Fax: 21367114; E-mail: bskhchan@gmail.com

¹is a qualified Chartered Surveyor, Chartered Builder, Quantity Surveyor, Registered Professional Surveyor (HK), and Certified Facility Manager with over 29 years of experience in the property, construction and management areas, providing professional services in property development, project and construction management, facilities/property and maintenance management, building and quantity surveying for various types of organisations and projects at different scales. For the last 12 years, Kenny has been working in higher education offering education and applied research in related areas.

Received 31 October 2007; Revised 31 October 2007; Published online 18 January 2008.

Abstract

This research aims to explore the empirical inter-relationships among maintenance costs, maintenance strategy, resources allocation, outsourcing strategy, benchmarks and maintenance cost index for hotels in Hong Kong. There seems to be limited literature and research available regarding maintenance, benchmark and cost analysis in the hotel industry, which would render this research more meaningful. Maintenance cost distribution, obstacles of multi-skilling, outsourcing implications, maintenance performance and practices will also be discussed. It is hoped that this research would enable the hotel operators to achieve better maintenance effectiveness and efficiency through various strategies and cost index, which appear not to be widely available in the market. The quantitative research methodology of the questionnaire survey can be conducted by major hotel operators in Hong Kong.